


we fail / we rise / we try again.

by lilac-vode (MollyMerula)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Jedi: Fallen Order (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, No Romance, psychometry angst and healing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-22
Updated: 2020-12-22
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:47:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28227879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MollyMerula/pseuds/lilac-vode
Summary: a study in 3 parts of Cal's psychometry as applied to his master's lightsaber
Relationships: Cal Kestis & Jaro Tapal, Cere Junda & Cal Kestis
Comments: 14
Kudos: 61





	we fail / we rise / we try again.

**I.**

After the pod hits the ground, Cal lies still for a long, long time. His head feels heavy, too heavy to lift, so he closes his eyes and listens to his heart pound until finally it slows so much he wonders if it has stopped.

When he opens his eyes, the interior of the pod seems smaller than ever, the walls pressing in around him. He scrambles to his feet, meaning to open the hatch, but comes to a halt when he sees and remembers.

Master Tapal’s body is beside him.

Cal has no way of knowing how much time passes before he can move again. Finally, still in a daze, he reaches for the hatch lever and shoves against it with all his weight. In the fractions of a second before it opens, he wonders if this pod will be his tomb as well as his master’s. But the seal pops, and a dim grey light trickles in, along with a breath of choking air that tastes like smoke and grease. Cal coughs as he staggers out of the pod, looking around for any indication of what planet he’s landed on. In the distance, huge metal carcasses of ships loom through the smog like mountains in a misty blanket. The area around him is desolate and uninhabited. Given the situation, he’s not sure that that’s a bad thing.

He looks back into the pod. It feels so wrong to leave Master Tapal’s body there, but he knows he cannot move it by himself. And anyway, he tells himself, it’s better for anyone who finds it to think that this pod crash was the end of the story for everyone involved. Jaro Tapal is dead, and Cal Kestis never escaped from that doomed Venator starship.

As he turns to leave, Cal realizes that he has forgotten to take his master’s lightsaber, the half-destroyed hilt that Master Tapal pressed into Cal’s hands with his last shred of strength. Returning to the pod, he sees it right away, and he reaches for it.

As soon as Cal’s hand touches the grip, there’s a blinding flash in his vision, like lightning striking inside his head. All at once he’s back aboard the cruiser, reliving the moment before his escape, those seconds that seemed like hours – but not through his own eyes. Instead he’s viewing the scene through the eyes of his master, and feeling his frantic emotions – and a blaster bolt through his chest.

His own yell snaps Cal out of the vision, and he finds himself clutching his chest, holding a wound that isn’t there. Suddenly the events of the day have become horrifically solidified in his head, and he sinks to his knees, his body frozen and shaking violently at the same time, as a sob wrenches itself out from his throat. When the rain starts, he doesn’t even feel it.

**II.**

Cal knows what to expect by now when he reaches for his master’s lightsaber. The flashes of image and sound have played out in his head so many times that they feel almost like his own memories. Still, that doesn’t keep him from flinching when he hears – or _feels_ , as though it’s coming from his own chest – his master’s voice, a booming growl telling him to run and not look back. Cal has had three and a half years to play through that scenario over and over again in his head, wondering each time if there was a way they both could have survived. And each time he comes to the same conclusion: there was nothing more he could have done, nothing more to give than all he had. In a strange, horrible way, that is comforting.

Though he takes great care to conceal his saber from the other scrappers – one glimpse of this object by a supervisor is as good as a death sentence for someone working in an Imperial-occupied scrapyard – Cal finds comfort in knowing it’s there, close to his chest and tucked safely under his poncho. And in the black of night, lying in his top bunk with his nose inches from the ceiling, it soothes him to hold the saber, wrapping his hand around the weight and coolness of its hilt and feeling its knurled grip under his fingers. From time to time the usual memory, stored within the object in Jaro Tapal’s final moments, crawls into his brain, and he does his best to ignore it. But sometimes he almost catches a glimpse of an unfamiliar memory, something much different from the brutal jolt that usually finds its way into his head – something…gentler. As soon as he senses it, though, it’s gone just as quickly, blending into the background hum of memories drifting far out of reach beneath the saber’s surface. But when Cal drifts into sleep, lulled by the heaviness of the hilt on his chest, the warmth of the lost memory is still there, weaving through his dreams like a glimmering thread in the darkness.

**III.**

“What do you think?”

Cere lifts Cal’s new lightsaber in her hand, tilting it to admire the almost seamless fusion of Master Tapal’s saber remnants with the old pommel of her own weapon. She smiles at the fine balance of the hilt as it rests in her palm.

“It’s perfect,” she says, handing it back to him. “I’m proud, Cal.”

Cal reaches for the saber, preparing himself for the familiar rush of his master’s last memory – but it never comes. Instead a new image flashes into his mind, along with a safe and gentle feeling. Cal is seeing through Jaro Tapal’s eyes once more, looking across a low table at – Cere? She’s a little younger, a little softer around the edges, but it is unmistakably her. She’s holding a cup of tea, and smiling as she listens to what Master Tapal is saying.

“He is learning well. His greatest shortcoming is his fear of failure. I explain to him often that failure is simply a step along the road to knowledge. When he understands that, I hope he will grow more confident.”

“Perhaps he could learn something from Trilla,” Cere says with a grin. “Sometimes I think she’s a little _too_ confident.”

Cal hears that rare chuckle, the sound he’s missed for so long, rumbling deep and warm in his master’s chest. “Maybe you can meet him someday.”

“I hope to,” Cere replies, and the memory begins to fade as she throws back the dregs of her tea.

“Cal? Hey, Cal. You okay?”

Cal looks up to see Cere – the real Cere, here and now – watching him with a gentle concern in her eyes. He rubs the tears from his face, and nods, and he smiles.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m okay.”


End file.
